Economy Baler

In 1911, George Langford took out a second mortgage on his house in order to start Economy Baler.
The company, headquartered on North Main Street, grew to be the largest business of its kind in the
world. In a 1943 Ann Arbor News article, Langford claimed that its success was "a direct
result of the old system of free enterprise which not only permitted but encouraged the plowing of
profits back into the business."

Economy Baler's motto was "turning waste paper into profit." In the early years of this century,
corrugated cardboard began to replace wooden crates for shipping. While wooden crates could be used
again and again, cardboard was hard to get rid of. Merchants would let it pile up in their
basements, where it was a serious fire hazard, before eventually paying someone to haul it away.
While paper mills were eager to get more paper waste and were willing to pay for it, the empty boxes
were so light and bulky it seldom was worth the trouble to handle and ship them. Langford's
invention changed that.

Langford learned about balers, and about business practices, from his uncle, Wendall Moore,
manager of the Ann Arbor Machine Company on Broadway. The company made agricultural machines,
including hay presses (see "The Broadway Bridge Parks," August). Langford began working for the
company while living with his uncle and aunt in their big house on Moore Street, having come to Ann
Arbor to attend high school. He held a variety of jobs; the last one, before he left to go on his
own, was traveling by horse and buggy to county fairs to show farmers the firm's products. On one of
these trips Langford heard that someone had invented a paper compressor. But the crude wooden
contraption left him unimpressed.

Believing he could make a better paper compressor, Langford tried to convince his uncle to add
one to his product line. When Moore refused, Langford decided to do it himself, quitting his job in
1911 to devote himself to his new enterprise. His only asset at the time was his house, on
Greenwood, so he secured a $5,000 second mortgage on it. He spent $100 to build a prototype of a
hand-powered metal baler. Using a picture of this single machine, he spent the rest of the mortgage
money on advertising, offering to sell the baler for $50, with a $10 deposit. Within a month he had
100 orders. On the strength of those, he went to the First National Bank and asked for a $5,000
loan. They gave him $500.

With $1,500--the bank loan plus the money from his customers' deposits--Langford bought supplies
and rented, for $10 a month, a small shop in the alley behind his uncle's business. At first he made
the balers himself in the shop during the day. Evenings he worked at home on bookkeeping details.
When the business began to take off, he hired a mechanic, Albert Wenk, to help him build the balers.
Wenk later became a partner, buying a 1/15 interest for $600. In 1943, reminiscing about those early
years, Langford said, "It was a tough job for a while, meeting the payroll on Saturday nights and
counting on checks coming in from purchasers in time Monday to keep the company bank account in
balance."

By 1912, Langford was in good enough shape to build his own shop at 1254 North Main. Economy
Baler's first building was a 35 by 70 foot shed, large enough for fifteen employees. By 1916, the
company had expanded into two additional stucco buildings complete with machine shop, forge shop,
assembly line, printing, woodworking machinery, and electrical shop. At the north end he built a
tall shed for his electric crane. Langford's son, Bob, remembers that the sign on its roof--"World's
Largest Baling Press Mfgr."--was so large that it served as a landmark for early pilots.

As his business prospered, Langford became well known in town. Almeda Koebler, who worked as a
cook for the Langfords in the 1930's, when they lived on Woodside Road and summered at Winans Lake,
remembers Langford as a large man, partly bald, very friendly and outgoing. He loved jokes so much
that he would pay people 25 cents to tell him a new one. He was also a practical joker. Anecdotes
handed down include one about a chair in his office that collapsed when someone sat in it and
another about rubber hooks on the wall that confounded first-time visitors when they tried to hang
their coats on them.

By 1925, Economy Baler was able to claim that Ann Arbor made more baling presses than any city in
the world. Langford employed 100 men who worked fifty hours a week year-round; had branch offices
and salespeople in practically every important city in the country; and was continually adding new
presses to handle everything from tin cans to tobacco.

In 1937, Economy Baler built a new office building facing Main Street. Architect Douglas Loree
designed a "modernistic" building with glass block windows across the front. Bob Langford, who
worked in the purchasing department of the new building, remembers that the glass block let in light
but got so cold in the winter that frost sometimes formed on the inside.

Economy Baler continued to thrive after World War II, developing several more special balers
including a huge cotton press and a scrap-metal baler that could swallow a whole auto body. By then
George Langford was ready to retire. Bob Langford might have taken over his father's business, but
although he had worked there, he did not feel right about going in as manager over the heads of
older, more experienced people. So in 1945, George Langford sold his controlling stock, taking care
to find a buyer who would keep the facility in Ann Arbor. (Bob Langford started his own Ann Arbor
business and later developed properties on Huron View Boulevard and Research Park Drive.) George
Langford died in 1956.

Economy Baler closed in 1976, when the last owner, American Baler Company, merged the Ann Arbor
operation with their plant in Bellevue, Ohio. The company buildings were owned by Lansky's junkyard
until 1978, when they were purchased by the Michigan Automotive Research Corporation. MARCO, which
does contract testing of engines, transmissions, and vehicles, has adapted the buildings to its own
uses. According to MARCO's Mike Boerma, the only indoor remnants of the buildings' original function
are the welding outlets on the walls. The exteriors have been modernized, except for the structure
closest to the river. It is still stucco, as it was in 1916, and the name painted on the wall is
still discernible: "Economy Baler Company."

[Photo caption from original print edition]: Economy Baler founder George Langford believed in
promotion: he spent $4,900 of his first $5,000 in capital on advertising. By developing a line of
machines capable of baling everything from cardboard boxes to junk cars, Langford built Economy
Baler into the largest manufacturer of its kind in the world--an achievement he boasted of in a
rooftop sign so large that it was used as a landmark by early pilots.

[Photo caption from original print edition]: Twenty years after it closed, a single fading sign
identifies the former Economy Baler complex, today home to the Michigan Automotive Research
Corporation.

AADL has partnered with the Street Art Fair to create a history of the event that has defined Ann Arbor summers for half a century. This exhibit brings together images, videos, and audio memories from fairgoers and fair participants alike to paint a picture of Ann Arbor's most creative festival.